


A Drowning Grip

by Fox_in_the_snow



Series: Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space [2]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Football, Friendship/Love, Post-Lethal White, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-18 18:17:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18124796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fox_in_the_snow/pseuds/Fox_in_the_snow
Summary: Robin and Strike drive back from Hull and have a long conversation in the car. Somehow once again, it ends up being more romantic than it sounds.Follows on from my other story, You Measured Your Thumb Against Mine, but can be read as a standalone too (probably).





	A Drowning Grip

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read the other story or can't remember it, all you need to know is that Robin and Strike went to Hull to investigate a case and ended up confessing their feelings (sorry for the cliche!) and getting together. This one is probably better if you have read that one but essentially you just need to be aware that they have made a crucial step towards deepening their relationship.

_I love you, I’ve a drowning grip on your adoring face_  
I love you, my responsibility has found a place  
Beside you, and strong warnings in the guide of gentle words  
Come wave upon me from the family wider net absurd  
“You’ll take care of her, I know it, you will do a better job.”  
Maybe, but not what she deserves  
  
Piazza, New York Catcher – Belle & Sebastian

 

Robin was driving the old Land Rover and Strike, once again, was in the passenger seat ferreting about for some food in the bag Robin had packed yesterday. They had left Hull about half an hour ago and things were starting to feel ‘normal’ again between them, as though nothing had changed the night before. But whenever Strike looked at Robin, sitting upright in the driver’s seat, her red-gold hair pulled back in a messy pony tail and her eyes focused on the motorway, he swore she had a  permanent little smile in the corners of her mouth that he had never seen before. This filled him with a kind of joy that was hard to ignore, and it reminded him that, actually, things _had_ changed.

“Errrrm, what do you mean you’ve never actually been to a proper football match?” Strike looked over at Robin with an expression of excessive disbelief. She kept her eyes on the road and answered him breezily, a tiny curve to her lips showing her amusement.

“I mean that I have never paid money to go and watch a game of professional football. And what’s more, I’ve never wanted to.”

Strike narrowed his eyes and considered the situation before responding. Even now after everything that had come between them, he still wasn’t sure how freely he could mention her ex-husband but fuck it, this was serious business. “Right, let’s be totally clear: is this an I-really-don’t-like-any-football thing, or an I-don’t-like-football-because-of-Matthew-being-a-tit thing?”

Robin smirked, enjoying his cautious tone when pronouncing Matthew’s name. It might never be an easy topic between them and while she didn’t exactly take pleasure in his discomfort, she appreciated that he wasn’t cavalier about bringing these things up. “It’s probably more to do with Matthew than anything else,” she conceded. “He somehow took the joy out of most competitive situations.”

Strike was relieved, and then strangely excited. “Great, because I think the time has come to rehabilitate the game for you. I know a bloke so I reckon I’d be able to get us some tickets for Saturday’s match. Gunners against the Hammers, home game for us, a London derby of sorts. I can’t promise it’ll be pretty but I can promise it’ll be cold, so bring your gloves.” He saw her look of trepidation and rolled his eyes in mock disgust. “Oh don’t be soft, Robin. It’s high time you went to a match. I’m actually shocked you’ve made it through 28 years of your life in this country without going to the football. And don’t give me that excuse about Masham being a rugby town again. You’ve been in London for long enough now.”

Robin tried to suppress a grin and failed. Oddly enough, it seemed like going to the football might be their first actual date, if such a word could be used to describe any interaction between the two of them. She replied in what she hoped was a nonchalant tone of voice, belying the happiness she felt at the idea that Strike was inviting her along to watch the football, something she knew he cared passionately about.   

“All right, I’m in. Not that I was given much of a choice.”

“No choice at all,” he agreed cheerily, opening a packet of crisps and taking a big handful. “I’m the boss and you’re doing this or I’ll fire you again.”

Robin’s eyes widened. “Oh, so it’s okay to joke about that now, is it? That time you gave me the sack and bro-” She’d been going to say ‘broke my heart’ but bit it back just before it came out. This wasn’t the time to get into that, not when they’d only just started sorting things out; it didn’t seem necessary to mention hearts quite yet. She hadn’t meant to spoil the mood either, but a quick glance to her left showed Strike awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck.

“Robin, I – ” he started.

Robin interrupted him. “Can you give me some crisps?” For a second Strike didn’t seem to know whether to push the conversation or be relieved Robin seemed to want to move on.  There were few things he disliked more than arguing with her, and certainly didn’t fancy doing it this morning when he was feeling strangely like there were absolutely no problems in the world. He poured a handful out of the packet into her waiting palm. They touched for a second and immediately he felt better. He knew from experience that it would stop being so electric at some point, but it right now he was savouring every pulse charged energy that passed between them.  

They didn’t speak for a few minutes while they ate the crisps. Robin tapped her fingers on the steering wheel and turned to Strike with an inscrutable smile on her face. “Now, since I’m going to the football with you, I think it’s only fair that you come to something with me.”

“All right, sounds reasonable enough, I suppose,” Strike agreed, and waited expectantly for her to continue.  

“Great! I met this girl, Sandrine, through Vanessa, and she’s having a Tupperware party next weekend and I have to bring a friend or… someone. That’s how the program works.”

Strike’s face was frozen in a look of sheer dismay and fear. He seemed to be having trouble getting any response out. “Um…” he started, without knowing how to continue.

Robin furrowed her brow with what appeared to be genuine surprise. “What? You did say recently you wanted to start cooking more often and eating healthily. It’ll be useful for you to have some Tupperware to store your leftovers in.”

“Yes, but –”

She couldn’t take it anymore and burst out in a peal of laugher. “Oh God, Cormoran! Your face! I can’t believe you thought I was serious! I would never go to a party like that on my own, let alone drag you along.” Her whole body was wracked with spasms of amusement and Strike, though he was momentarily annoyed at her, thought she looked utterly beautiful. Her head was thrown back and he could see every inch of her long white throat. She was gorgeously alive right then and he was hit with that familiar feeling of being constantly on the cusp of kissing her. He suddenly realised he didn’t have to squash that thought back down anymore and the warmth that bloomed through him was intense. It was all he could do not to grab her right then and there, but he had to settle for the notion that later – well, later he could go for his life.  

“You cheeky –”

There was that completely innocent face again, accompanied by a little shrug of the shoulders. “I’m just trying to help you with your health kick.” She was positively glittering now and it was impossible to look away from her, perhaps ever.  

“Pleased with yourself, are you?” he asked, adopting a dark tone of voice and trying to control himself.

“Yes, thank you, I am quite.” She beamed at him before looking back at the road.

“Tupperware party,” he grumbled, half serious, half thrilled by her joke. “This is why us blokes can never really understand you. Well, things like that I don’t want to understand.”

Robin’s hair sparkled as she leaned slightly towards him in false condescension. She looked as light as air and he loved seeing her that way. “Are you angry because I’m funnier than you?” she asked in an overly serious tone of voice.

“When did I ever pretend to be funny?”

“No, I don’t suppose you have pretended that,” she mused. “It would be a bit of a stretch, wouldn’t it?”

“All right, all right, moving on now…” She was smiling at him with such openness and delight that it made something quiver in his stomach. He didn’t quite remember when he’d started having such a visceral response to Robin but he had to admit to himself that it wasn’t all together unpleasant, this stirring he felt deep within him whenever she opened up to him like this. He found himself speaking before he even realised he was going to. 

“Robin, I want to say –“ Strike started haltingly. “I want to say sorry. About the firing thing.”

“About firing me, or joking about it?” He looked struck again and not sure what he should say. Robin felt a pang in her chest for him as he blinked, his eyes uncertain and wary. She softened. “It’s okay, Cormoran. You already apologised for firing me and I understand why you did it. You don’t have to say anything else.”

“’Kay. Just wanted you to know again how shit a decision it was,” Strike was playing with his hands and sounding quite earnest, which was not very typical for him.  “‘Spose I wasn’t really thinking straight at the time, what with all the pressure of that case, worrying about you getting hurt again, being fed up about your wedding… It was a rough time.”

 “Yes, I know.”

“Good.” His voice was stronger now and he looked more like himself. “Just had to make sure you know I wouldn’t do it again. Mainly because it was so bloody horrible trying to replace you with someone who didn’t drive me absolutely mad.”

Robin was about to change the subject when she realised what he’d said a few seconds earlier. “Did you just say that you fired me because you were fed up with my wedding?” For a moment it seemed like he was going to panic and obfuscate, but then he appeared to realise, with relief, that he didn’t have to do that anymore either.

“Erm…. Yes. I did say that. Because I was.”

There was a silence then and Strike, buoyed by the previous 24 hours, took a deep, even breath. “Why did you marry Matthew, Robin?”

Robin flushed immediately, even though she’d been anticipating this conversation. She wasn’t sure whether to deliberately stall for time or just come out with it. There was a pause during which they whizzed past the sign stating they were only 20 miles out of Leicester, and he asked the question again with a little more force.  

“Why did you marry him?”

She was flustered, but didn’t want to this to be misread as defensiveness or a lack of willingness to talk about the subject. “What do you want me to say?”

“Nothing,” Strike responded quickly, with what he hoped was as reassuring shake of his head. “You don’t have to say anything. Just wondered, that’s all. I’ve wondered a lot over the years, especially – well, especially recently.”

Robin seemed to consider this for a moment before answering. She sounded very calm, as if she was recounting something she’d learnt off by heart. It occurred to him that she might have come up with this in response to similar questions from other people – and most importantly from herself.

“Because he was my only ever boyfriend and I thought I loved him. I suppose I did love him, once, a long time ago. I was grateful to him because he looked after me when I needed someone after – after – you know. He asked me out when I’d barely even kissed anyone else and I thought he was cool.” She smiled at that, a half embarrassed, half fond expression on her lips. “God, I really thought he was cool, Cormoran. He was on the rugby team, and he had completely clear, beautiful skin, and people were in awe of him all throughout the school. It sounds so stupid now, but I was 17 years old and I didn’t fully understand that other kids being intimidated by Matthew’s kind of nasty mocking was cause for alarm rather than a sign of his sharp wit or charm, or whatever you want to call it. And he was nice to me – he was so nice to me. He used to tell me how pretty I was all the time, and he made me feel special. I know now I wasn’t special, not even to him, but at the time he made me think how lucky I was to be good enough for Matthew Cunliffe.”

“Fucking hell,” said Strike, shaking his head, a strong feeling of anger surging through him. “You’ve got it the wrong way round. He’s the one who should have been trying to prove he was good enough for _you_.” Robin raised one of her eyebrows and curled her lip slightly as if she didn’t believe him.

“You didn’t know me back then, though. I was different – definitely much quieter. I was so stuck in my own head all the time, and didn’t know how to express all the things I thought or felt.” She let out a tiny burst of laughter as she remembered herself back then. “Do you know what I was obsessed with when I was 17 years old? The psychology of radical Islam. That was the year the Twin Towers fell in New York and I remember it happening so clearly. I became fascinated with why it had happened, with why all those people – including the hijackers – had died. I secretly got all these books from the library and I learnt so much but I didn’t know how to share it with anyone. One afternoon I tried to explain it to Matthew and he told me I was really smart but I had better not talk too much about that or people would start thinking I was weird. I was happy he told me that because I thought he was helping me, you know, socially. And he was probably right! Why would anyone want to be friends with someone morbidly obsessed with mass tragedy?”

Strike was hit with the powerful image of a 17-year-old Robin and he couldn’t ignore the way his heart constricted at the thought of her. He looked at the woman in front of him now and felt unadulterated affection for every version of her from the past, all the old-Robins who had combined to make her into this current-Robin. Unlike anyone else he’d ever met, he had a desire to know all the Robins throughout her life and make sure they were all okay.  He saw his current-Robin had gone quiet and seemingly become lost in self-critical introspection.  He reached over and tugged her hair gently, feeling the soft strands between his fingers.

“Oi, you know what I was into when I was 17? Inspiral Carpets, that band from Manchester that Noel Gallagher was a roadie for.” Robin came out of her thoughts and wrinkled her nose slightly. She wasn’t sure about Strike’s taste in music. He noticed this and filed it away to talk about at another time; he looked forward to a long conversation about ‘Madchester’ and why Inspiral Carpets probably changed the world. “I listened to almost nothing else for a least six months of that year. And then there was Sally Collinson from my history class.” He grinned salaciously and Robin rolled her eyes.

“Sounds a lot more normal: music and tits.”

“But who gives a fuck about ‘normal’? I was a complete mess back then, in almost every single way. My mum was with that cun- was with Jeff, we were living in a squat, and everything was chaotic. I had Inspiral Carpets and the thought of touching Sally one day, that’s pretty much it.” He grinned dreamily, suddenly transported back to his teenage self and the promise of what lay under Sally’s school shirt. He looked a little sheepish when he saw Robin’s smirk, and continued on with his point.  

“Only Sally wasn’t just a pair of tits, she was this smart, weird girl. She spent almost every lunchtime for six weeks making a life-size model of The Velvet Underground in clay. That got you a pretty strange reputation in 1991, I’ll tell you that much. I haven’t seen or even really thought about Sally in decades, but if there’s one thing I’m sure of it’s that whatever she’s doing now will be something incredible.”

Robin sounded unimpressed. “The moral of the story being all teenage outcasts grow up to be amazing adults.”

“Oh no, that’s definitely not true. Another day I’ll tell you about Pete, who sat on the other side of Sally in our history class. Weird as shit and about that fascinating too. ‘Spose what I’m trying to get at is that you have this annoying habit of selling yourself short. You always have, ever since the moment I met you. I’m not an idiot so I more or less understand why, but I think you’re smart enough now to start getting over that.”

“Sounds like there’s a compliment in there somewhere,” Robin remarked drily.

“Jesus bloody Christ, talk about fishing! What do you want me to say? That I think you’re eminently more interesting than all the other women I’ve ever imagined with their tops off?” Her face when bright red and he noted with pleasure the effect that he could have on her.

“Oh God, Cormoran, did you really just say that?”

“I reckon I did, yeah. For some reason.” He forced the embarrassment away and focused on the way she was gripping the steering wheel, her fingers curling around it tightly. She raised an eyebrow just a little and he wondered if she knew what she was doing to him.

“Do you… do you still have to imagine it, though? I mean, after last night…?”

Strike felt himself prickle all over at the thought of last night. He detected more than a hint of flirtatiousness in Robin’s question and his body reacted automatically, overwhelmingly, so he pressed his palms down into his thighs and focused on the road on front of him. That’s when he realised they had turned off the motorway and were slowing down as they entered the outskirts of a medium sized town. He glanced at Robin curiously, as she turned into a side street and stopped the Land Rover. She unstrapped her seat belt and turned to him fully, her eyes absolutely brimming with – with what? Hope? Happiness? Something more? He couldn’t bring himself to analyse that right now, but made a note to remember that precise image for later on. He twisted to face her as well.

“You are so fucking gorgeous, Robin. I’m pretty sure you know that to be true, or you should anyway because I’m certain you don’t experience a shortage of male attention. So you’re gorgeous, and I hope I don’t sound naff when I say this, but you’re the kindest person I know without being, you know, a soft touch. You’re incredibly clever with the best knack for this job I’ve seen in a long time. Your intuition is almost never wrong. You make everybody feel comfortable and you’re funny. I’m betting people don’t mention that very often when they talk about you, but you’re bloody funny. You’re – ”

He didn’t get any further than that because Robin chose that second to reach over and grab him by his collar, closing the space between them to press her lips against his with a ferocity that hurt in the best possible way. Their noses bumped and he could feel her chin poking into his. It was perfect.  He deftly undid his own seatbelt so his arms were free to put around her without stopping the contact. They continued kissing until Robin broke away, panting a little. She stared right at him, unblinking, and he was caught again by how unguarded her eyes were. He felt a little afraid of the trust she was placing in him; there was a drowning grip somewhere but he wasn’t sure who was the one drowning and who was the one doing the saving. Robin licked her lips and he was overcome once more by his body’s reaction to her.

“How unseemly will it be if I sit on your lap in this car right now?”

Strike let out a noise that was half laugh, half groan. “Do we suddenly care about things being unseemly?”

Robin straightened her back in an effort to appear composed and elegant. “Well, we do have a business to run, do we not? I thought we could keep our dignity somewhat.”

He cupped her cheek with one hand and pulled at her hip with the other. “Fuck dignity. Come over here right now.”

Robin shuffled rather clumsily over the handbrake and, with some difficulty, manoeuvred herself until she was straddling him. She promptly banged her head on the roof of the car.

“Shit, this is not going to work,” she muttered, disentangling her limbs and sliding back to the driver’s seat, looking faintly embarrassed. Strike still had a hand on her hip and he squeezed it.

“Hey, Robin,” he murmured, his heart feeling like it was home, or at the very least, somewhere it never wanted to leave. He wasn’t the sort of person who said things like this, or even thought them, but there was something so precious about the woman next to him, and all he wanted was for her to understand what she meant to him. “You really are too good to be true.”

The smile she gave him was dizzying; he actually felt dizzy for a second. She looked out the window at her surroundings for the first time and said, “Cormoran, do you want to spend the day in, uh, Loughborogh with me? Because I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do.” She was getting out of the car and grinning up at the winter sun before he realised his legs still worked – well, more or less anyway – and he opened the door to join her. She had come around to his side of the Land Rover and was right there when he pulled himself up and out.

As they began to walk, she tucked herself under his arm perfectly, just the way he remembered it from all those months ago and they headed towards the centre of Loughborough.

“Actually,” Robin asked, that innocent tone of voice back again, “did you say we’re going to see West Ham tomorrow? I do like that tall one who plays for them, Andy something?”

Strike tightened his grip around her shoulders a little menacingly. “If you’re talking about that useless great git Andy Carroll you can take your Loughborough and shove it. I am not entertaining anymore swooning over that 6’3” lump of unskilled –”

“Oh shut it, Cormoran,” she laughed as pressed her face into the side of his neck and started nipping at him playfully.

“See? There you go being funny again – or at least thinking you are, no doubt.”

“You know I am.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice dripping with fondness, “I know you are.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is written in memory of that time, several years ago, when I got stranded in Loughborough because my boyfriend got on a train to York with my wallet in his jacket pocket. All I had was an Australian phone about to run out of battery and some coins, and I had to somehow make it to London to meet my uncle... Anyway, suffice to say I saw a lot more of Loughborough than I had intended and do not associate it with happy memories. The first story tried to make Hull into a more romantic place and now I'm doing the same with Loughborough! Maybe I'll do a whole series on unlikely British locations for love. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I've been going through some really bad times recently and this was bloody therapeutic to get out. 
> 
> (Haha, also, I am a West Ham fan and I do think Andy Carroll is kind of hot so, um, sorry, Strike...)


End file.
